The Comics Research Bibliography began as an online resource in 1996. John Bullough, struck by the success of the Grand Comics Database crowd-sourcing project, proposed a companion project of a compilation of works about comics. Michael Rhode was the only member to join him in compiling an online Comics Research Bibliography. Bullough selected a citation format and created a web interface hosted on his school’s server. We both contributed citations, from our local newspapers and collections, especially from Rhode’s books and magazines. In the early days of the Internet, we were unaware of John Lent’s similar project which he had started for an academic publisher. Both online library catalogues and booksellers have made it less necessary to have an author’s books listed, but it seemed silly to have reviews of the books and not the citation for the book itself, so
collections of comics were added fairly early in the project. Since updates to the online version have stopped, Rhode has decided to produce a semi-annual print and electronic version to fill the gap. He and Lent began working together on the International Journal of Comic Art over a decade ago, and at the conclusion of Lent’s publishing contract, began sharing bibliographic data. Three previous print editions appeared as Volume 11, Number 3 of International Journal of Comic Art (626 pages), Comics Research Bibliography, 2012 (two volumes, 832 pp.) and CRB, 2018
(two volumes, 1253 pp.). This bibliography is a continual work in progress – the authors literally have thousands of additional citations waiting to be formatted and included. Many new articles have appeared due to the growing acceptance of comic art as a subject of interest at the same time the Internet has become a mass publishing media. As the years passed, and the Internet expanded, online citations grew far more rapidly than print ones. We are trying to be a quality filter by only grabbing substantive articles, or interviews off the web. If one types ‘Fantagraphics’ into Google’s search engine, one million results are returned, but if you look at the Fantagraphics entry here, hopefully we will have some substantive pieces on the company that will be useful for research.

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